High Costs Allow “Pay Drivers” To Continue to Hurt the Lower Divisions of Stock Car Racing

Jeffrey Hrunka - Staff Writer

Nic Antaya/ARCA Racing

Motorsports fans are well aware of the phrase “pay drivers.” This refers to when a driver with significant backing gets a top-tier ride with a prominent racing organization solely for his funding rather than his skill. With increasing prices in stock car racing, these drivers have been able to swoop in and take the best rides at different levels of stock car racing, hurting the competitive nature of each series.

While some may not know, the ARCA Menards West Series season is already underway. Last season, the series averaged 16-22 cars per race, but the opening race at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway had an entry list of just 12. 

This problem was also apparent in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series last season, as the series struggled to have a full field week in and week out. Financial issues have forced teams to look to drivers with self-funding to be able to put their trucks on the racetrack. With the implementation of pay drivers, the series has continued to be placed in a bad light. Many attribute the constant cautions and intentional wrecks that have persisted in the division in recent years to the prominence of pay drivers.

For example, last fall, Connor Jones intentionally wrecked Matt Mills to bring out the yellow. This allowed Grant Enfinger to make a strategy call to win the race, guaranteeing him a spot in Championship 4. He beat the dominant truck, Corey Heim, who led 68 laps.

In addition to affecting the race, Jones’s actions hospitalized Mills after his truck caught on fire from the incident. Jones was suspended for one race. While he does have the talent to compete in the Truck Series, his financial backing lessens the worry of losing his top tier Thorsport ride to another driver.

Two factors behind this rise in pay drivers have been the aforementioned rising cost of racing and the fact that sponsors want to invest in the Cup Series.

“Not many opportunities come unless you have deep pockets,” former NASCAR driver Hailie Deegan said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I think a lot of people fail to realize that on the NASCAR side of things, it's such a crazy number. So if $6 million to run a quality Xfinity team just came out of nowhere, fell off a tree, for sure I‘d do it.” 

With the cost of racing increasing, drivers often must seek sponsorship themselves to pay for the ride for the season, as teams aren’t earning enough money from the purse at these races. 

Even when drivers do secure a major sponsor, most want their product seen on the biggest stage. They would rather be in the limelight on a few Sundays than a multitude of races in NASCAR’s lower divisions with a competitive team. In turn, truck races have seen fewer entries because the purse cannot offset the cost for some teams that enter trucks with less sponsorship.

“I can't also just fight with my partners that have been invested in me to go down to lower divisions because they don't get a return for their money,” NASCAR Cup Series driver Corey Lajoie said on the ‘Stacking Pennies’ podcast. “They want to bring other people to the big show, not to a Friday or Saturday show.”

So how do we fix this problem?

Solution 1: Get a Bigger Share of NASCAR’s Total Earnings

The ongoing court battle of 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports against NASCAR has highlighted the absence of profitability in professional stock car racing. After both teams refused to sign the new media deal because they were not given a fair share, NASCAR said they would no longer be chartered teams. The pair jointly filed an antitrust lawsuit against the sanctioning body in response.

If this issue is prevalent at the highest level of stock car racing, imagine NASCAR's second and third-tier series payout. Take the Craftsman Truck Series championship race at Phoenix. In a two year stretch, the purse only went from $817,025 in 2022 to $822,570 in 2024. That’s less than a 1% increase over two years. By comparison, the NASCAR Cup Series’ payout rose by 10% in that span at the track from $10,542,284 to $11,700,064.

NASCAR receives money through fines, purses, donations, merchandise, and media deals. The sanctioning body also owns most of the tracks on the schedule, allowing it to acquire cash from ticket sales. These are only some of the avenues of money. It truly puzzles me why they cannot divide more of it among the teams.

Once this court case goes through, fans and team owners will find out if their sport is a monopoly. If Front Row Motorsports and 23XI Racing succeed in their antitrust lawsuit, many more teams can find success at the lower levels of stock car racing instead of disappearing after a decade.

With the increased flow of income, teams can take a step back from being forced to take drivers with large sponsorship deals rather than taking talent to stay afloat.

Solution 2: Go Back to the Lower Series’ Roots

Many fans argue that NASCAR has delegitimized itself by adding stage racing and the playoff format, and that the series should return to the full-time points standings. However, through these complaints, a legitimate case can be made for returning the ARCA and the Truck Series to their roots. By roots, I mean taking the series to local short tracks around the country, which set it apart from any other racing series in the U.S. 

While the purses were lower, the lower costs of having fewer types of chassis helped offset this difference. It allowed local drivers to make their debuts. Because of the lower costs, teams eyed dominant talent at the track instead of “pay drivers” who could bring in excess funding.

The early truck schedules kept most of the tracks around the team bases in North Carolina, allowing teams to spend less money on travel. Most of these tracks were quarter-mile to one-mile tracks. The short racing helped increase aggression, with the closer quarter battling. We just saw this at the Clash at Bowman-Gray Stadium, which was a rousing success.

This combination of factors made the early years of the truck and ARCA series successful: keeping the costs down and making the racing more competitive.